The 24 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) Band provides unlicensed spectrum which is uniquely available throughout the world. In the U.S. it is governed by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) part 15.209 and 15.247. In Europe, the European Telecommunications Standardization Institute (ETSI) ETS 300.328 outlines its requirements. In Japan, certain standards cover the band. Most of the rest of the world has also designated this band for common use. The dominant application of this frequency band is for consumer microwave ovens which on one-hand guarantees the continued existence of the band but on the other hand is a significant source of interference. This interference is bursty in nature. In spite of this challenge, this band provides an opportunity for in-home networks to develop one platform for universal deployment allowing the greatest economy of scale to be leveraged. However, other bands exist with similar interference characteristics that may also be useful for in-home networks.
The Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT) system, the Personal Handyphone System (PHS), and other micro-cellular systems have been suggested for in-home application and, at first glance, seem suitable with respect to the systems' integral cordless telephone function. However, the current frequency plans for DECT and PHS are only available regionally. Furthermore, rules governing the 24 GHz ISM, the only band with worldwide availability, is not conducive to PHS or DECT protocols. Both PHS and DECT cannot withstand the bursted interference. Interference aside, these micro-cellular systems contain significant additional complexity to handle community or campus deployment providing for intercell hand-off and roaming capability. Similarly, the systems are designed to tolerate multipath distortion present even in the systems' small micro-cell environment which is significantly larger than an in-home pico-cell.
However, a low complexity protocol that is robust in the presence of bursted interference may be utilized to alleviate such problems as are described above. This low complexity protocol is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/893,332, LOW COMPLEXITY PROTOCOL, DEVICE AND SYSTEM ROBUST IN THE PRESENCE OF BURSTED INTERFERENCE, by Mark Cudak, James Kelton, Phil Rasky, Bruce Mueller and Kadathur S. Nararajan, which was filed Jul. 16, 1997 and was assigned to Motorola, Inc. and is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
However, in the U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/893,332, a wireless peripheral device, referred to as a terminal device, could not communicate directly with another wireless peripheral device. To transport information from one wireless peripheral to another, the payload, which represents a largest portion of data being transmitted and carries the information, is sent twice once by the wireless peripheral source to the access point device, and again by the access point device to a destination device. If a method, access point device and peripheral devices were arranged to provide a centrally coordinated peer-to-peer wireless communications network that minimized payload transmissions, greater efficiency would be achieved.